Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Twinkle Twinkle

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Falling Stars

by Hope Madden

Co-directors Gabriel Bienczycki and Richard Karpala balance the banal with the uncanny in their desert folk horror, Falling Stars.

Three brothers sit around a fire pit by the garage in some middle of the San Bernadino County desert. Their dad is eager for them to put the damn fire out and get inside. They know why he’s agitated—it’s the first night of harvest, and the falling stars will appear at any moment.

And around these parts, everybody knows those ain’t stars.

That’s what Falling Stars delivers—the creeping, growing sense that people do know. The inhabitants hereabouts may not have much, but the film never makes them out to be ignorant or caricatured. This story is not from a patronizing point of view—look at what these rubes believe. There’s a levelheaded authenticity, a lived-in superstitious normality that pervades the film and gets under the skin.

The film, written by Karpala and expertly lensed by Bienczycki, creates a sense of place with lonesome landscapes, all stars and sky and desert roads leading to nowhere. So, the brothers—Mike, the eldest (Shaun Duke Jr.); Adam, the youngster (Rene Leech); and Sal in the middle (Andrew Gabriel)—know better than to get into the pickup and head out.

But the sun won’t be down for more than an hour, and Mike knows something his brothers don’t. Their buddy Rob (Greg Poppa) not only saw a witch, but he shot one and buried her in a tarp out in the desert. Who wants to see her?

It’s the same kind of innocent yet macabre curiosity that fueled Stand By Me, except Falling Stars replaces nostalgia and melancholy with witchcraft and curses.

The filmmakers keep the tensions heightened, much thanks to the endearingly vulnerable and human performances of their ensemble. Little acts of friendliness balance with little acts of cowardice, logic gives way to magical thinking, but the fear is real.

A b-story involving an am radio host goes nowhere, but a single scene with the boys’ mama (Diane Worman) turns the supernatural thriller into a psychological horror in seconds.

Falling Stars delivers a fresh take on an age-old tale, but it feels like it’s lived out there in the desert waiting forever.

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Holly Jolly

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Terrifier 3

by Hope Madden

Horror cinema has a long, conflicted relationship with Christmas movies, especially those boasting a maniacal Santa Claus. In 1984, Silent Night, Deadly Night found itself yanked from theaters only days after its release. The Netherlands removed every poster of Dick Maas’s 2010 Saint from public display because its depiction of St. Nick was deemed too disturbing for children.

If Christmas horror tends to be the most divisive and the likeliest to offend, then it seems like an obvious choice for the next installment in Damien Leone’s Terrifier series.

Yes, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) has left Halloween behind in favor of a jollier holiday. But wait, you say. Wasn’t Art decapitated at the end of Terrifier 2?

Please see Halloween H2O and its follow up, Halloween: Resurrection.

Actually, don’t. Resurrection is easily among the worst in the franchise. Suffice it to say, decapitation does not mean the end of a true horror franchise villain, especially when his films are raking in the cash. And there is no doubt that Art has gone the way of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers—silent, deadly, and able to really bounce back from injury. Death, even.

So, it’s Christmas Eve in Miles County and Sienna (Lauren LaVera, decapitator from T2), recently released from a psychiatric hospital, is spending the holidays with her aunt, uncle and little cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose).

Art’s been waiting (in a nice callback to Black Christmas, among the finest and first holiday horrors). He’s not alone, and that’s too bad because he’s more fun on his own. His guest is part of a convoluted explanation for his re-capitation (I did make that up, thank you). But do we need to understand it?

Weak spots include most references to the magic and mental illness of the tediously long (2 ½ hours, whew!) Terrifier 2. Strengths involve a barroom scene with cameos aplenty, plus a nod to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre—once considered the most nihilistic and violent of all horror films. Once.

What has set Art the Clown apart from other unstoppable genre monsters is his sadism. Michael was mainly efficient with his kills. Jason could be inventive. Art delights in the pain and terror, and his holiday killing spree offers loads of opportunities to exercise his depraved imagination.

Thornton is again a charismatic villain, and he gets his own Christmas song this time, which is undeniably fun. The third installment is not nearly as lean and mean as the original, nor is it as bloated and ludicrous as the second. As crazy as it sounds when you’re talking about watching limbs being torn off a screaming human’s body, the carnage does get tiresome after a while.  

If you dug the previous Art the Clown films, you will find endless entertainment in the newest. You’ll also find mediocre acting and dumb plotting but really excellent practical effects. And blood by the bucketful.

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Send In the Clowns

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Joker: Folie à Deux

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Five years ago, Todd Philips made a dangerous film, a comic book movie through a fractured Scorsese viewfinder that cried with the clown the world said was not funny. Cleverly bitter, it was an excellent retooling of Scorsese’s violently alienated loner. But mainly it was a stage for the unerring brilliance of Joaquin Phoenix.

Phillips’s sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux (which means “delusion or mental illness shared by two people”) revisits poor Arthur Fleck shortly before he stands trial for murdering five people, including late night talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro).

Fleck is a shell of his former self. No jokes, no laughter. Until prison guard Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) gets Arthur included in a singing class over in the minimum-security ward, where Arthur meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga).

And suddenly, Arthur has a song in his heart.

Phoenix continues to be so good he’s worrisome. Gaga delivers on nearly the same level—which is unheard of—and her spark is sorely missed when she’s not onscreen. Philips flanks the couple with two of the business’s best, Catherine Keener as Arthur’s lawyer and Gleeson, whose brutish jocularity is alarmingly authentic.

Where Phillips found the tone for his alienated white man in Scorsese, his love story takes on the fantastical theatricality of a musical. It’s a choice that works better in theory than execution, mainly because the sequel is almost entirely confined to prison and courtroom drama. The pace is leaden, the grim brutality repetitive. Where the first film used a half dozen or so profoundly human scenes to break your heart, the sequel fetishizes Arthur’s misery to the point of sadism.

Phillips surrounds the terrific ensemble (which includes another memorable turn from Leigh Gill) with several well-staged set pieces, but the ambition of this new vision soon finds itself battling curiosity and tedium.

Phoenix and Gaga make a truly electric pair, but as the courtroom scenes drag on its not hard to side with Lee’s impatience at the strategy in play. What begins as a relevant comment on the blurring of realities descends into a self indulgence that seems to find Phillips still taking on critics of his first Joker film.

The clear Scorsese moments amid all the musical numbers are an appropriate reminder of how the film can’t quite bring its ambitions of mold-breaking to fruition. And as it leaves behind a slightly open door, Folie à Deux exits the stage as a dark, frustrating exercise, as capable of painful beauty as it is of clowning around.

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Existential Mysteries and the Comedy Life

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Me, Myself, and the Void

by Rachel Willis

Suffering from a tough crowd at his standup show, Jack (Jack De Sena) is surprised when his non-comedian best friend Chris (Chris Smith) shows up to bail him out. He’s even more surprised when the crowd disappears, only to be replaced by a void resembling his own apartment in director Tim Hautekiet’s film Me, Myself, and the Void.

Right off the bat, we learn that Jack has suffered some kind of black out event. He is unclear as to why he’s on the bathroom floor. However, he quickly realizes that Chris is a figment of his imagination, here to help him unpack this mystery.

In addition to the mystery, Jack has to unpack the events leading up to his ungainly sprawl on the bathroom floor. His memory is a bit hazy in the void, but visions quickly start flooding in. This not only helps us learn more about Jack, but also about Chris, and Jack’s ex, Mia (Kelly Marie Tran).

One problem is the film’s assumption that Jack and Chris are familiar to the audience. Some may know their YouTube channel, but for those without prior experience with the duo, the familiarity doesn’t land well. It feels like a vanity project.

However, De Sena and Smith play well off each other, their banter landing like that of two men who are, in fact, best friends. This helps to engage those unfamiliar with their brand. It also works that De Sena takes lead, being the more engaging and natural of the duo.

As we uncover more of Jack’s life, the film attempts heavier material. A particularly touching moment involves Chris sharing a personal detail of his relationship – a moment that then becomes fodder for Jack’s act. It’s a glimpse into who Jack really is, as well as a nod to men’s seeming aversion to therapy.

It’s too bad the film doesn’t stay focused here. That might have given the audience something to chew on. Instead, we get a maudlin mess of a movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zUCu5CmQk8

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Time After Time

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Thing Will Be Different

by Hope Madden

Writer/director Michael Felker has never made a feature film. What he has done is work alongside Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead as editor on every feature they’ve made since 2014’s Spring. It shows.

With Felker’s heady brother-sister time loop twister Things Will Be Different, the filmmaker revisits many of the themes that have marked each of Benson and Moorehead’s features (the duo produces and Moorehead has a cameo). But this film carves out its own identity.

We meet Sidney (Riley Dandy) and Joe (Adam David Thompson) not long after some kind of robbery. We know nothing of the crime itself, just that they’d gotten separated and have reunited at a little diner. From there they’ll head to a house. A house where they’ll be safe.

Sid has a daughter she needs to get back to. Joe doesn’t have much, but he looks forward to making up lost time with his kid sister while they hide out for two weeks. It’s not that the house itself is hidden—hell, they walked to it through a cornfield. It’s that it takes them to a place outside of time.

But the thing is, they’re not supposed to be there, and that complicates things when they want to go back home.

Among the film’s many qualities is the lo-fi time travel. The isolated farmhouse the pair flees to is anything but fantastical. Neither is the combination safe, or the hand-held cassette recorder for communicating across time. It’s all as clever and satisfying as it is budget friendly.

Felker’s writing is consistently compelling, his script offering both leads everything they need to build a lived-in, fractured relationship full of longing and bitterness. The clues concerning the time loop itself are just as clever and satisfying, every element fitting the retro vibe that itself feels delightfully out of time.

Felker’s film is certainly reminiscent of much of Benson and Moorehead’s work, although it also calls to mind a handful of other time benders, from Tenet to Timecrimes. But it never feels borrowed.

Felker uses time travel as an understated and poignant metaphor for the harmful cycles you find in relationships, especially in families. Thanks to sharp writing, stylish direction and a couple of well-crafted performances, he further separates his time travel fantasy from the scores of others and keeps you guessing until the last, powerful frame.

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Crushed Under Fortune’s Wheel

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The Wait

by Christie Robb

The gorgeous, warm, burnished glow of colorist Raúl Lavado Verdú and strategic photography by Miguel Ángel Mora elevates writer/director F. Javier Gutiérrez (Rings) take on a working-class man’s emasculation and subsequent descent into madness.

Three years ago, Eladio (Victor Clavijo) was offered a job as a gamekeeper on a privately-owned 1970s Spanish hunting estate. His wife reluctantly agreed on the condition that the gig was temporary—a two-year isolated hustle up in the mountains that would result in a better life on the other side.

Now, into their third year, she’s no longer talking to him. And their kid is growing restless, too.

When Eladio is offered a new opportunity to increase the size of their growing nest egg, greed overwhelms him. He pushes his luck too far.

Fortune’s Wheel turns and starts to crush him.

But is Eladio’s greed really the root of the evils that beset him? What about the guy who pressured him into the shady deal? And what’s with all the weird shit buried around the property?

The acting is good, and the movie has some genuinely unsettling moments. But it’s a little slow and leaves a subplot about feminine rage on the table like a loaded but unfired hunting rifle in favor of something more para than normal. 

So, it’s good to have pretty shots of the Spanish mountains to look at while you are waiting for the plot to catch up with the unsettling, sweaty, grimy, overripe vibe.

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Dust to Dust

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Hold Your Breath

by Hope Madden

Among the least examined perspectives in Westerns is the woman’s. In the rare instance that a filmmaker looks closely at what it was like for a woman on the wild frontier, the tale isn’t happy.

Earlier this year, writer/director/co-star Viggo Mortensen’s Western The Dead Don’t Hurt reexamined masculine nobility as abandonment. A decade ago, Tommy Lee Jones’s underseen The Homesman mined a very real phenomenon that befell many brides of the West. But Karrie Crouse and William Joines’s Hold Your Breath—actually set in the 1930s Oklahoma Dust Bowl rather than being a strict Western—feels more akin with Emma Tammi’s 2018 horror, The Wind.

The always magnificent Sarah Paulson is Margaret Bellum, mother to Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), left to keep the family together while her husband travels to build bridges until the rain returns and their little farm can flourish again. In the meantime, Margaret and the girls are surrounded on all sides, as far as the eye can see and even farther, by dry, useless dirt.

Like Tammi’s horror, Hold Your Breath weaves maternal tragedy with societal pressures and supernatural legend to create a sometimes-hypnotic descent into madness.

Paulson’s brittle sensibility never entirely loses its humanity thanks to her layered performance. Deepening the characterization with genuine tenderness for the girls elevates the “is she crazy or is this really happening” trope.

Supporting turns from Miller, Annaleigh Ashford and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear) heighten tensions and call to mind the chill of an effective campfire tale. The filmmakers also capture a fear that permeates the God forsaken region with effective visual moments, often with Margaret and her needlework or a little boy and his makeshift mask. These moments are stark and eerie, but the film can’t seem to hold onto that feeling.

Paulson’s performance aches with a pain that is particular to a mother, and it’s this broken heartbeat that keeps Hold Your Breath compelling to its conclusion. Its horror is touched with a melancholy suited to the genre. The tension comes and goes, leaving you with less than promised, but the film has enough going for it to make it worth your time.

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Get the Party Started

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Frankie Freako

by Hope Madden

Fans of the old Canadian collective Astron 6, whose output combined a love of 80s VHS with delightfully offensive imagery and an incredible mastery of silliness and tone, rejoice. Though no longer an official organization, the braintrust behind the brand have reassembled for the sloppy new horror comedy, Frankie Freako.

Connor (Connor Sweeney) is bland. His boss (Adam Brooks, flawless as always) knows it. His wife (Kristy Wordsworth) knows it. Connor isn’t convinced, although he is drawn to those late-night TV ads. You know, with the 1-900 numbers? And the partying goblins?

Connor caves and calls Frankie Freako. And before you can say “shabadoo” (a line delivered with hilariously tedious repetition by one of the freakos), the house is a wreck, Conor’s wife’s sculptures are in pieces, and someone’s spray painted “butt” on the wall!

And his wife will be home soon! What’s a fella to do?

Frankie and his two freako pals show Connor what raising heck can really do for a guy in this puppets-and-practical-effects flick.

Aside from Office Space and “quick, clean up this mess” films like Risky Business, Frankie Freako lovingly evokes all those Gremlins derivatives: Ghoulies (especially the sequels), Critters, Troll, as well as the Puppet Master series. Writer/director Steven Kostanski simultaneously mocks and embraces the inanity of each of those movies and delivers a spirited bit of comedy fun.

The film can’t touch the inspired Saturday Morning TV lunacy of  his last feature, 2021’s Psycho Goreman, but Frankie Freako fits reasonably well into the full stash of oddities made by Kostanski and his buddies Brooks, Sweeney, and Matthew Kennedy (here voicing Frankie). Along with Psycho Goreman, their combined output includes The Editor (2014), Father’s Day (2011), and uncharacteristically but impressively, The Void (2016), among others.

Frankie Freako does not perch at—or honestly, near—the top of that list of lunatic cinematic gems. But the group has its misses as well, and this film fits better with its hits.

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Metal Mama

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The Wild Robot

by Hope Madden

With wry, almost gallows humor, visual panache and an impressive voice cast, co-writer/director Chris (How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch) Sanders’s The Wild Robot nails the aching beauty of parenthood like few other films have.

Adapted from Peter Brown’s gorgeously illustrated middle grades novel, the film drops us and ROZZUM unit 7134 on an island uninhabited by humans. This makes it tough for “Roz” (Lupita Nyong’o) to fulfill her mission of completing a task, any task. But then an undersized gosling (Kit Connor) imprints on her, allowing Sanders to have some fun with the unending complications associated with Roz’s new task: parenting.

The writing and the delicately lovely animation work together to hypnotic effect, each unveiling something more human with every scene, regardless of the fact that there’s nary a human in the movie. Sanders’s script reflects the human experience, both the timeless (the thankless heartbreak of investing your whole heart and soul into the process of successfully losing your child to their own future) and the immediate (AI, corporate greed, tech overlords).

A talented cast deepens the film’s effect. Nyong’o effortlessly treads the line between logic and longing with so graceful a character arc that you can feel Roz blossoming. Pedro Pascal joins her as Fink, the fox who hates to admit that he wants to be part of this little family unit more than anything.

Catherine O’Hara—always a treasure—delivers dry wisdom in hilarious doses. Meanwhile, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Matt Berry and Bill Nighy bring endearing personalities to their furry and feathered characters, while Stephanie Hsu injects Act 3 with a little wicked humor.

The film’s delight is only deepened by its sadness, and you may find yourself bawling repeatedly during this film. I know I did.

Sanders’s career is marked with the vulnerable optimism that defines an outsider’s longing for connection. In his worlds, a parent and their sort-of child—Lilo and Stitch, Hiccup and Toothless, Roz and Brightbill—flail and flounder until they find the strength of an extended family.

It’s a story he’s apparently not done telling. But he tells it so very well.